The Senate will vote tomorrow on the budget deal the House of Representatives has already passed. That deal will set overall government spending for the rest of this fiscal year, and all of fiscal 2015. Kopenhaver says members of her group, Federally Employed Women, and many other feds were expecting a lot worse.

New guidance is out that incorporates the latest Better Buying Power principles at the Defense Department. Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall says building those principles into policy was the reason he updated Instruction 5000.02.

Citizenship and Immigration Services is trying to reduce the time it takes to go from concept to implementation for software. Traditionally, the government takes years to develop requirements, go through the acquisition process and eventually implement a new system or application. Mark Schwartz is the chief information officer at USCIS. He tells executive editor Jason Miller how his agency is cutting the time it takes to design and put mission-critical software into action.

If the Senate passes the Congressional budget deal, federal contractors will have to relearn an important part of their business, working with stability. Larry Allen authors the Week Ahead newsletter.

The government’s lead agency for providing security services at federal office buildings, the Federal Protective Service, is still struggling to provide training to its huge force of contract security guards, according to the Government Accountability Office.